Letters to the Editor published Wednesday, Jan. 26, 2011

To the city of Brookings: We would like to express how we enjoyed the many times we have visited your beautiful city.

We are excited about the Multi-Use Path project. We enjoy walking when we visit there and think this is a safe way to enjoy the exercise and beautiful weather.

Thank you for allowing us to comment on this project.

Harvey and Reba Morris

Nipomo, Calif.

Cast your vote for new city bike path

Editor:

Kudos to the city of Brookings for applying for the ODOT grant to build a new bike path, and to Arwyn Rice of the Pilot for the excellent article covering this issue.

However, this grant will only become a reality for Brookings if we as citizens follow the link at www.brookings.or.us and answer the ODOT survey. I just did it, and it didn’t take long.

A few minutes of your time today will help provide funds for a multi-use/bike path that we can all use for years to come. It’ll give students at the new campus an affordable, safe way to get to campus, it’ll provide healthy, free recreation in our beautiful coastal community, and it’ll protect our air by limiting automobile traffic on 101. It’s a winner on all sides!

Do it now: go to brookings.or.us, click on “Comment on the Multi-Use Path Project,” and click on “Internet Survey” near the bottom of the first page. The Brookings bike path project is found under “Oregon Coast: Central & South,” and is Project #9. Couldn’t be easier to give a lasting gift to our community.

Linda Bozack

Brookings

Shelter dogs facing many great needs

Editor:

This community has been amazing with help to the dog shelter for the neglected dogs and puppies recently seized.

One of the dogs required surgery, about $900 worth, and other dogs have various medical needs. The only funds that pay for such medical services are those which come to Pennies for Pooches. Please make donations to Pennies for Pooches to cover the extraordinary increase in medical bills. Checks can be sent to P.O. Box 1883 in Gold Beach or dropped off at the shelter. Cash can be taken to the shelter or put in the various Pennies for Pooches boxes at local businesses. Donation receipts for tax purposes are available.

There are two other great needs. The only dryer in the shelter has stopped working. The laundry is huge and now volunteers are having to cart wet laundry to a local laundromat which costs money and is very time consuming. There are really not enough volunteers to man the shelter and take laundry and do the myriad other tasks which are constant. The other great need is for another water heater for the area where dogs are bathed and equipment is cleaned. When the washer is going, there is often no hot water for any other needs. While many of us donate what we can, there is not any extra money for the dryer and water heater. The staff and volunteers at the shelter are so kind and dedicated and the dogs so needy. Please help.

Barbara Eells

Brookings

Approved projects will boost economy

Editor:

Curry County Homebuilders Association would like to offer a congratulatory salute to the U.S. Borax Corp. and Burton Weast for their perseverance and continued efforts with the Lone Ranch Development Project and the Brookings Planning Commission for approving the development plan last week.

The Home Builders Association believes that the project, along with the new hospital and the Crescent City Airport improvements, will bring a much-needed sustainable boost to our local economy. We view these developments as solutions in part to a complex economic downturn.

Now let’s find solutions to the gravel mining and Crook project barriers, and keep progress moving forward. As physics has taught us, a body in motion tends to stay in motion.

Dave Frazier,

president, Curry County Homebuilders Association

Brookings

What kind of example is that?

Editor:

Everybody in the world knows that if you listen to a heavy metal song backwards on a phonograph record you will turn away from Jesus and become a devil worshipper.

Nobody can argue with that logic. It is also a well known fact that if you ever listen to Sarah Palin on videotape or audiotape and if you run the tape backwards, you will be brainwashed into listening to Rush Limbaugh and voting Republican. I know these things to be true because of outstanding Americans like Chris Matthews and Keith Olbermann.

I heard about the Sarah Palin deal so I decided I would do a little test. Thank God my belief in Jesus Christ (my lord and savior) is so strong or I would have fallen victim to Sarah Palin and her dirty political tricks!

It is true that the shooter in Tucson read a lot of children’s books like Peter Pan. We should take all the children’s books and burn them all. Children do not have to learn how to read. Children’s books are all written by child molesters and are a creation of the devil. It is also true that the Peter Pan movie was a Disney movie. Walt Disney should be unfrozen and he should be indicted as a co-conspirator for the Tucson killings. All the Disney movies should be burned and all employees of the Disney corporation should be locked up for perversion and treason against the United States. Mickey Mouse and Donald Duck are always running around with no pants on, what kind of example is that for our kids? Walt Disney was a Nazi supporter and the Tucson shooter once read Mein Kampf. Need I say more?

Joe Thomas

Brookings

Power of words for good or ill

Editor:

In thinking over the events in Tucson and the aftermath that has followed, I am reminded of the power of words for good or ill.

Victor Hugo, the author of Les Miserables, wrote “The guilty one is not he who commits the sin, but the one who causes the darkness.”

This is not to excuse any act of evil, we are all individually accountable for our actions if they harm another. But there is a more subtle morality to which we are also accountable and which we disregard at our nation’s peril.

Words have the power to build or destroy. They have the power to bind together or tear apart…a meeting…a community…the national fabric. “Loose lips sink ships” …including ships of state.

We are all responsible for what comes out of our mouths. But we are just as responsible for what we take into our minds and hearts by way of inflammatory media. We shouldn’t forget that we can “just say no,” turn it off, and in the quiet of our own earnest deliberations come to a fairer and more just evaluation of things.

We need to be mindful that though it has withstood many assaults in its two centuries, our democracy (or republic, as the case may be) is still a work in progress and is by no means unsinkable. Challenges lie ahead that will be daunting, so let’s not unthinkingly add fuel to the fire that may make solutions all the harder to come by.

Eileen Sorrels

Harbor

Help Bill pay for accident expenses

Editor:

As a personal friend of Bill Schlichting, who is a well-known and
honored citizen of our community, I am writing this letter to ask the
community to help with expenses that have occurred due to the accident
he was involved in, through no fault of his own.

An account named “Friends of Bill” has been set up at Sterling
Savings Bank, 721 Chetco Ave., P.O. Box 1520, Brookings, OR 97415.

Checks should be made out to Sterling Savings Bank, with the notation, “Friends of Bill account.”

For more information, contact Pastor Dwayne Ruefner at 541-469-5757, or Sterling Savings Bank at 541-469-3665.

Cheryl Olson

Brookings

Time to stop blaming others

Editor;

This is in response to Doris Burck’s letter (Pilot, Jan. 19).

I was a resident in California when Ronald Reagan was the GOP
governor. I remember seeing the documentary films on TV the state of
California made of the state’s insane asylums, that you refer to as
mental institutions. County mental hospitals were not closed – I know
because my son spent a week in one back in the 1980s. The reason
documentary films of those institutions were made was to show how people
who were not insane were being warehoused in them. People who had
cerebral palsy and were autistic and who had Down’s Syndrome were being
shoved into them. It was one of the most inhumane things I ever saw.
Those people were forced to live in the worse kind of filth – much like
the recently rescued dogs and cats at a residence here in Brookings.
That’s why Governor Reagan closed state insane asylums, because they
were places of abuse – not healing.

California was a great state to live in then. When Reagan left
California, the budget was in the black, the first time in decades. It
took Jerry Brown (Democrats) less than four years to spend it all and
put the state budget back in the red – that’s when I became a
Republican. We Americans need to stop blaming others for what we are
personally responsible for, and we shouldn’t have to be responsible to
give haven to illegal aliens and foot the bill for government’s pork
barrels.

Deanna Gill

Brookings

Want to balance the feds’ budget?

Editor:

Oregon just got an “A” from the Center for Science in the Public Interest on food poison control.

That puts us in the top 14 percent of all states. It’s nice to get an
“A,” but we don’t need one. We could cut funding for public health
services and get a “C” like California and still be in the top 43
percent of all states. And California is still a major food producer.
What’s the big deal. Plus, our food producers could save money from
implementing all those corrective measures public health services
require, therefore adding to their bottom line.

We could turn down the $5.6 million from the feds for road and bridge
repair from 101 to Agness, thereby saving our grandchildren having to
pay that off down the road. After all, the cost works out to be about
$50,000 per Agness resident. Who in their right mind would buy such
remote property in the first place. And eventually, when a bridge goes
down, Jerry’s Jets could add a couple of rush- hour trips thereby
increasing their profitability.

And, speaking of buying remote property, why not cut-back on rural
road repair? Those people drive too fast anyway and they jack their
trucks up so high, they blind oncoming traffic even with their
headlights on low. A few pot holes would slow them down a bit and make
those roads safer for the few people they serve. All that asphalt for so
few people. It’s just not cost effective.

And that Sudden Oak Death eradication program the feds have to cut
and burn all of those trees. Surely we can find a cheaper way.

What are you willing to do without, since, according to some, Oregon
and the feds spend way too much money. I’ve got more ideas of where to
cut Oregon’s budget. Do you? Want to balance the federal budget? Go to:
http://nyti.ms/bLo4RF and give it a try.

Gordon Clay

Brookings

Where’s water for new residences?

Editor:

Concerning “City (of Brookings) gives nod to Lone Ranch Development
Plan” (Pilot, Jan. 22), those responsible need to turn their attention
to the problem of supplying water for the proposed 1,000 new residences.

In both 2008 and 2009, Brookings officials, as reported in the Pilot,
had to ask consumers to conserve water in summer as Chetco River flows
decrease seasonally.

The Lone Ranch situation has seen the public fed apparent
misrepresentation and untruth. Originally, the development was to be
self-sufficient regarding water, the supply to come from wells on the
property. Wells supposedly were drilled, and flow results were reported
to be adequate for the projected population. Then, in what appeared to
be a series of backroom deals and allegedly falsified information about
the well outputs, it was determined that the needed water would be
supplied via a city main. In a city council meeting, the then-city
public works director stated that the water service line from Lone Ranch
to the city water main stub line was considerably larger than the stub
line. With the proposed Lone Ranch development together with those in
Harbor and problems with a limited and fluctuating Chetco River supply
also surrounded with possible misinformation, it is evident that there
is a looming water shortage. Those responsible need to deal with this
issue before it becomes a reality.

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